by Pat Barker
Other people had had similar experiences. Men had escaped from danger before now by running on broken legs. But Prior had created a state whose freedom from fear and pain was persistent, encapsulated, inaccessible to normal consciousness. Almost as if his mind had created a warrior double, a creature formed out of Flanders clay, as his dream had suggested. And he had brought it home with him.
Rivers, thinking over the previous evening, found that he retained one very powerful impression. In Prior’s speech and behaviour there had been a persistent element of childishness. He’d said, He was wounded. Not badly, but it hurt. He knew he had to go on. And he couldn’t. So I came. So I came. The simplicity of it. As if one were talking to a child who still believed in magic. And on the stairs. What happened then? Nothing. He wasn’t there. It was like a toddler who believes himself to be invisible because he’s closed his eyes. And that extraordinary claim: I have no father. Surely behind the adult voice, there was another, shrill, defiant, saying, He’s not my Dad? At any rate it was a starting-point. He could think of no other.
Rivers had not thought Prior would appear for breakfast, but no sooner had he sat down himself than the door opened and Prior came in, looking dejected, and in obvious pain. ‘How did you sleep?’ Rivers asked.
‘All right. Well, I got a couple of hours.’
‘I’ve asked the girl to bring us some more.’
‘It doesn’t matter, I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, at least have some coffee. You ought to have something.’
‘Yes, thanks, but then I must be going.’
‘I’d rather you stayed. For a few days. Until things are easier.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you.’
‘You wouldn’t be “imposing”.’
‘All right,’ Prior said at last. ‘Thank you.’
The maid arrived with a second tray. Rivers was amused to see Prior devour the food with single-minded concentration, while he sipped milky coffee and read The Times. ‘I’ve got an hour before I need go to the hospital,’ he said, when Prior had finished. ‘Do you feel well enough?’
When they were settled in chairs beside the desk, Rivers said, ‘I’d like to go back quite a long way.’
Prior nodded. He looked too exhausted to be doing this.
‘Do you remember the house you lived in when you were five?’
A faint smile. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember the top of the stairs?’
‘Yes. It’s no great feat, Rivers. Most people can.’
Rivers smiled. ‘I walked into that one, didn’t I? Do you remember what was there?’
‘Bedrooms.’
‘No, I mean on the landing.’
‘Nothing, there wasn’t… No, the barometer. That’s right. The needle always pointed to stormy. I didn’t think that was funny at the time.’
‘Do you remember anything else about it?’
‘No.’
‘What did you do when your father came in drunk?’
‘Put my head under the bedclothes.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘I went down once. He threw me against the wall.’
‘Were you badly hurt?’
‘Bruised. He was devastated. He cried.’
‘And you never went down again?’
‘No. I used to sit on the landing, going PIG PIG PIG PIG.’ He made as if to pound his fist against the other palm, then remembered the burn.
‘Where were you exactly? Leaning over the banisters?’
‘No, I used to sit on the top step. If they started shouting I’d shuffle a bit further down.’
‘And where was the barometer in relation to you?’
‘On my left. I hope this is leading somewhere, Rivers.’
‘I think it is.’
‘It was a bit like a teddy-bear, I suppose. I mean it was a sort of companion.’
‘Can you imagine yourself back there?’
‘I’ve said I –’
‘No, take your time.’
‘All right.’ Prior closed his eyes, then opened them again, looking puzzled.
‘Yes?’
‘Nothing. It used to catch the light. There was a street lamp…’ He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. ‘This is going to sound absolutely mad. I used to go into the shine on the glass.’
A long silence.
‘When it got too bad. And I didn’t want to be there.’
‘Then what happened? Did you go back to bed?’
‘I must’ve done, mustn’t I? Look, if you’re saying this dates back to then, you’re wrong. The gaps started in France, they got better at Craiglockhart, they started again a few months ago. It’s nothing to do with bloody barometers.’
Silence.
‘Say something, Rivers.’
‘I think it has. I think when you were quite small you discovered a way of dealing with a very unpleasant situation. I think you found out how to put yourself into a kind of trance. A dissociated state. And then in France, under that intolerable pressure, you rediscovered it.’
Prior shook his head. ‘You’re saying it isn’t something that happens. It’s something I do.’
‘Not deliberately.’ He waited. ‘Look, you know the sort of thing that happens. People lose their tempers, they burst into tears, they have nightmares. They behave like children, in many respects. All I’m suggesting is that you rediscovered a method of coping that served you well as a child. But which is –’
‘I went into the shine on the glass.’
Rivers looked puzzled. ‘Yes, you said.’
‘No, in the pub, the first time it happened. The first time in England. I was watching the sunlight on a glass of beer.’ He thought for a moment. ‘And I was very angry because Jimmy was dead, and… everybody was enjoying themselves. I started to imagine what it would be like if a tank came in and crushed them. And I suppose I got frightened. It was so vivid, you see. Almost as if it had happened.’ A long pause. ‘You say it’s self-hypnosis.’
‘I think it must be. Something like that.’
‘So if I could do it and tell myself to remember in theory that would fill in the gaps. All the gaps, because I’d bring all the memories back with me.’
‘I don’t know if that’s the right thing to do.’
‘But in theory it would work.’
‘If you could become sufficiently aware of the process, yes.’
Prior was lost in thought. ‘Is it just remembering?’
‘I don’t think I know what you mean.’
‘If I remember is that enough to heal the split?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think there has to be a moment of… recognition. Acceptance. There has to be a moment when you look in the mirror and say, yes, this too is myself.’
‘That could be difficult.’
‘Why should it be?’
Prior’s lips twisted. ‘I find some parts of me pretty bloody unacceptable even at the best of times.’
The sadism again. ‘There was nothing I saw or heard last night that would lead me to believe anything… terrible might be happening.’
‘Perhaps you’re just not his type.’
‘“Mister Prior.’”
A reluctant smile. ‘All right.’
Rivers stood up. ‘I think we’ve got as far as we can for the moment. Don’t spend the day brooding, will you? And don’t get depressed. We’ve made a lot of progress. It’ll do you much more good to have a break. Here, you’ll need this.’ Rivers went to his desk, opened the top drawer, and took out a key. ‘I’ll tell the servants to expect you.’
TWENTY
Prior woke with a cry and lay in the darkness, sweating, disorientated, unable to understand why the grey square of window was on his right, instead of opposite his bed as it should have been. He’d been with Rivers for over a fortnight and yet he still had these moments when he woke and couldn’t remember where he was. Footsteps came padding to his door.
‘Are you all right?’ Rivers’s v
oice.
‘Come in.’ Prior put the lamp on. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’
‘You cried out. I couldn’t think what it was.’
‘Yes, I know, I’m sorry.’
They looked at each other. Prior smiled. ‘Shades of Craiglockhart.’
‘Yes,’ Rivers said. ‘We’ve done this often enough.’
‘You were on duty then. Go on, get back to bed. You need the rest.’
‘Will you be able to get back to sleep?’
‘Oh, yes, I’ll be all right.’ He looked at Rivers’s exhausted face. ‘And you certainly should. Go on, go back to bed.’
The dream had been about Mac, Prior thought, as the door closed behind Rivers. He couldn’t remember it clearly, only that it had been full of struggling animals and the smell of blood. Rivers seemed to think it was a good sign that his nightmares had moved away from the war, back into his childhood, but they were no less horrifying, and in any case they were still about the war, he knew they were. Rivers made him talk endlessly about his childhood, particularly his early childhood, the rows between his parents, his own fear, the evenings he’d spent at the top of the stairs, listening, words and blows burnt into him till he could bear it no longer, and decided not to be there. He could still not remember what happened in the childhood gaps, though now he remembered that there had been gaps, though only when he was quite small. Once, in sheer exasperation, he’d asked Rivers how he was getting on with his own gap, the darkness at the top of his own stairs, but Rivers had simply smiled and pressed on. One always thought of Rivers as a gentle man, but Prior sometimes wondered why one did. Relentless might have been a better word.
The nightmares, though, were not about the rows between his parents. The nightmares were about Mac. And that was strange because most of his memories of Mac were pleasant.
An expanse of gritty asphalt. A low building with wire cages over the windows. Smells of custard and sweaty socks. The singing lesson, Monday morning, straight after Assembly, with Horton prowling up and down the aisles, swishing his cane against his trouser leg, listening for wrong notes. His taste had run to sentimental ballads, ‘The Lost Chord’ a firm favourite. This was the time Mr Hailes was inculcating a terror of masturbation, with his lectures on Inflamed Organs and the exhaustion which followed from playing with them. Horton sat down at the piano and sang in his manly baritone:
I was seated one day at the organ
Weary and ill at ease.
Prior gave an incredulous yelp of laughter, one or two of the others sniggered, Mac guffawed. The piano faltered into silence. Horton stood up, summoned Mac to the front of the room and invited him to share the joke. ‘Well?’ said Horton. ‘I’m sure we could all do with being amused.’
‘I don’t think you’d think it was funny, sir.’
Mac was savagely caned. Prior was let off. Horton had heard Prior laugh too, he was sure of it, but Prior, thanks to his mother’s skrimping and saving, was always well turned out. Shirts ironed, shoes polished, he looked like the sort of boy who might get a scholarship, as indeed he did, thanks partly to Father Mackenzie’s more robust approach to organ playing. Bastard, Prior thought, as Horton’s arm swung.
Years later, after witnessing the brutalities of trench warfare, he still thought: Bastard.
At the time he had been determined on revenge. Angrier on Mac’s behalf than he would ever have been on his own.
Horton was a man of regular habits. Precisely twenty minutes before the bell rang for the end of the dinner break, he could be seen trekking across the playground to the masters’ lavatory. Not for him the newspaper the boys had to make do with. Bulging from one side of his jacket, like a single tit, was a roll of toilet-paper. He marched across the yard with precise military tread, almost unnoticed by the shouting and running boys. Humour in the playgrpund was decidedly scatological, but Horton’s clockwork shitting was too old a joke to laugh at.
One dinnertime, posting Mac where he could see the main entrance to the school, Prior went in on a recce. Next day he and Mac slipped into the lavatory and locked the door of one of the cubicles. Prior lit a match, applied it to the wick of a candle, shielded the flame with both hands until it burned brightly, and fixed it in its own wax to a square of plywood.
Prompt to the minute, Mr Horton entered. He was puzzled by the locked cubicle. ‘Mr Barnes?’
Prior produced a baritone grunt of immense effort and Horton said no more. Not even that constipated grunt tempted them to giggle. Horton’s beatings were no laughing matter. They waited in silence, feeling the rise and fall of each other’s breath. Then, slowly, Prior lowered the candle into the water that ran beneath the lavatory seat. It was one long seat, really, though the cubicles divided it. The candle flickered briefly, but then the flame rose up again and burnt steadily. Prior urged it along the dark water, and it bobbed along, going much faster than he’d thought it would. Mac was already unbolting the door. They ran across the playground, to where a game of High Cockalorum was in progress (by arrangement) and hurled themselves on top of the heap of struggling boys.
Behind them, candle flame met arse. A howl of pain and incredulity, and Horton appeared, gazing wildly round him. No use him looking for signs of guilt. He inspired such terror that guilt was written plain on every one of the two hundred faces that turned towards him. In any case there was dignity to be considered. He limped across the playground and no more was heard.
Once he was safely out of sight, Prior and Mac went quietly round the corner to the forbidden area by the pile of coke and there they danced a solemn and entirely silent dance of triumph.
And why am I bothering to recall such an incident in so much detail, Prior asked himself. Because every memory of friendship I come up with is a shield against Hettie’s spit in my face, a way of saying of course I couldn’t have done it. What surprised him now was how innocent he’d felt when Beattie first mentioned Hettie’s belief that he’d betrayed Mac. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he’d said automatically, with total assurance, for all the world as if he could answer for every minute of his waking life. Only on the train coming back to London had he forced himself to accept that it was possible he’d betrayed Mac. Or at any rate that it was impossible for him to deny it.
Since then he’d gained one fact from Rivers that filled him with fear. He now knew that in the fugue state he’d denied that his father was his father. If he was prepared to deny that – a simple biological fact after all – what chance did pre-war friendships have? Rivers had hesitated visibly when telling him what his other state had said, and yet Prior’s reaction to it had been more complicated than simple rejection or denial. To say that one had been born in a shell-hole is to say something absurdly self-dramatizing. Even by my standards, Prior thought wryly. Yet if you asked anybody who’d fought in France whether he thought he was the same person he’d been before the war, the person his family still remembered, the overwhelming majority – no, not even that, all of them, all of them would say no. It was merely a matter of degree. And one did feel at times very powerfully that the only loyalties that actually mattered were loyalties forged there. Picard clay was a powerful glue. Might it not, applied to pre-war friendships with conscientious objectors, be an equally powerful solvent?
Not in this state, he reminded himself. In this state he’d risked court martial for Beattie’s sake, copying out documents that incriminated Spragge. But then Beattie was a woman, and couldn’t fight. His other self might be less tolerant of healthy strapping young men spending the war years trying to disrupt the supply of ammunition on which other lives depended.
But Mac, he thought. Mac.
He did eventually drift off to sleep, and woke three hours later, to find the room full of sunshine. He peered sleepily at his watch, then reached for his dressing-gown. Rivers, already shaved and fully dressed, was sitting over the remains of breakfast. ‘It seemed better to let you sleep,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid the coffee’s cold.’
‘Did you get back to slee
p?’
‘Yes.’
Lying hound, thought Prior. He drank the cold coffee as he shaved and dressed. Rivers was waiting by the desk. For a moment Prior felt rebellious, but then he looked at Rivers and saw how tired he was and thought, my God, if he can manage, it, I can. He sat down, and the familiar position, the light falling on to Rivers’s face, made him aware that he’d taken a decision. ‘I’m going to see Mac,’ he said.
Silence. ‘I think the reason I’m not making any progress is that… there’s a there’s th-there’s oh, for Christ’s sake.’ He threw back his head. ‘There’s a barrier, and I think it’s something to do with him.’
‘Finding out one fact about your behaviour over the past few weeks isn’t going to change anything.’
‘I think it might.’
Another long silence. Rivers shifted his position, ‘Yes, I do see that.’
‘And although I see the point, I mean, I see how important it is to get to the root of it, I do need to be functioning now. Somehow going over what happened with my parents just makes me feel like a sort of lifelong hopeless neurotic. It makes me feel I’ll never be able to do anything.’
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that,’ Rivers said. ‘Half the world’s work’s done by hopeless neurotics.’
This was accompanied by an involuntary glance at his desk. Prior laughed aloud. ‘Would you like me to help you with any of it?’
Rivers smiled. ‘I was thinking of Darwin.’
‘Like hell. Why don’t you let me do that?’ Prior asked, pointing to a stack of papers on the desk. ‘You’re just typing it out, aren’t you? You’re not altering it.’
‘It’s very kind of you, but you couldn’t read the writing. That’s why I have to type it. My secretary can’t read it either.’
‘Let’s have a look. Do you mind?’ Prior picked up a sheet of paper. ‘Rivers, do you realize this is the graphic equivalent of a stammer? I mean, whatever it is you couldn’t say, you certainly didn’t intend to write it.’